September 1, 2011 9:38am EDTSeptember 1, 2011 8:02am EDTFirst baseman Mark Teixeira is frustrated with the slow pace of the games when his Yankees take on the Red Sox.

Staff report

Published on Sep. 1, 2011

Sep. 1, 2011

A day after the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox took almost four hours to play nine innings, Mark Teixeira sounded fed up with the glacial pace of New York-Boston contests.

"It's brutal," Teixeira told The New York Times on Wednesday before the teams squared off at Fenway Park. "I can't stand playing a nine-inning game in four hours. It's not baseball. I don't even know how to describe it. If I was a fan, why would I want to come watch people sitting around and (players) talking back and forth, going to the mound, 2-0 sliders in the dirt? Four-hour games can't be fun for a fan, either."

Teixeira went so far as to say that he longs for the pace of National League games. He played the equivalent of a full season with the Atlanta Braves in 2007 and 2008, before signing an eight-year, $180 million contract with the Yankees prior to the 2009 season.

"I love baseball, but I also love the National League," Teixeira told The Times. "If it was a three-hour game, you were like, 'Man, this game is long.' Crisp games, pitchers throw strikes, go after hitters. These four-hour games are ridiculous."

Teixeira caught a break Wednesday: Boston's 9-5 victory took just 3:16 to play, a full 43 minutes off the 3:59 needed to complete the Yankees' testy 5-2 win Tuesday. The teams have played just one sub-three-hour game this season in 14 tries, and just barely at that. They took 2:58 on April 10.

But these teams don't just play long games against each other; they regularly go beyond three hours for nine frames.

Teixeira's manager, Joe Girardi, accepts longer games as being part of the New York-Boston rivalry.

"We do have players that will work the count and aren't afraid to hit deep in counts, and like to get walks," Girardi told reporters Wednesday. "But the other thing is you never want to give up the big hit. Every game's a big game, so how many 2-0 heaters do you see in Yankee-Red Sox games?

"(Pitchers aren't) going to throw as many strikes. You're going to have more talks between the catcher and the pitcher: 'This is a big at-bat, what are we going to do here, he got a hit last time so let's try to pitch him different.' And you've got nationally televised games."

National TV games, such as Wednesday's Yankees-Sox game on ESPN, tend to be longer because Major League Baseball allows networks to take longer commercial breaks between innings than can local broadcasters.

Last month, Boston manager Terry Francona received a note from Joe Torre, MLB executive vice president for baseball operations, about how slowly pitcher Josh Beckett was working in a start against the Yankees. Torre was the Yankees' manager for many a marathon meeting with the Sox.

"You know what's interesting about this now? Joe Torre is kind of in charge of this, and he had the greatest quotes of all on why these games are long," Francona said, according to the Boston Herald. "But I mean, it's two really good teams and there's a lot at stake, there's a lot of attention to detail. Every pitch seems pretty big, every baserunner seems pretty big."

Francona said he isn't about to tell Beckett, Wednesday's winning pitcher, to speed up things.

"We always want our pitchers to work quick, just because your defense is going to do better," Francona said, according to the Herald. "But if I had my choice of him pitching slow and winning or getting a letter from the league, that's what I'd go with, rather than him hurry up and pitch and not win."